It’s been 15 years since Jennifer Lynch directed Boxing Helena, and the intervening years have seemingly cooled her directorial genes, because Surveillance is much easier to swallow, although the subject matter is still upsetting to the stomach. The film takes an interesting premise and manages it to cram it through a meat grinder until you’re left with something that you wouldn’t really want to eat in the first place. Rather than the commentary on surveillance that the film starts to establish in the beginning, you’re left with what feels like an homage to Natural Born Killers.
Surveillance takes place inside three different interrogation rooms (actually meeting rooms and supply closets that have been appropriated for use) inside a very small town’s police station. Two FBI agents, Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond arrive on the scene following a brutal multiple homicide, and set up three video cameras inside the room to record separate eyewitness events. Most of the film is told in flashback through these stories.
The main problem with Surveillance is that it rests solely the directors ability to try and not telegraph a huge twist to the audience, and that sadly doesn’t happen. It’s the sort of twist you can spot coming a mile away. As a result, when the reveal actually happens, and I can only guess that the director and writer wanted to keep this a secret, you’ve seen it coming for so long that you don’t even bat an eye. It’s like the train pulling in to the station an hour late.
The performances in the film are fairly decent; Pullman hasn’t been this wacky or off-kilter in a character since the under-appreciated Zero Effect, and French Stewart and producer/writer Kent Harper are both fascinatingly reprehensible as two cops who take pleasure in shooting out a vehicle’s tires just before they pull someone over for speeding. They aren’t just morally grey––they’re downright pitch black in their performances.
Cheri Oteri tries to stretch her dramatic legs in this movie, although it’s difficult when you keep expecting her to say something funny, which is a singular frustration that most comedic actors run into. She plays a slightly redneck mother of a young girl and her brother who witness some of the brutality with her family while on vacation.
But the real star of this film is Pell James, who plays drug addict Bobbi Prescott. She plays a hard-edged woman who turns on a dime when she gets threatened, and as a result she becomes the most vulnerable character in the movie, even more so than the little girl. There’s an extremely uncomfortable moment between her and Ormond’s character that is probably one of the best––and worst––of the entire film.
By the time the end of the film rolls around, it’s unclear exactly what you’re left with. There’s a clear disconnect when the final scene rolls by, and there’s no one left to care about in the movie. Is that a comment on the audience surveilling the film? Or is it surveilling us? Or do we even care? It’s clear that Lynch has a tendency to try and follow in her father’s footsteps, or at least Bill Pullman felt the need to try and channel some of his characters, but you have to wonder what sort of filmmaker she’d be if she didn’t have that pedigree.
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